one
could have felt that it was permanent. As a rule she passed Henley's
coffee to him through the hands of the two Wrinkles, but this morning
she rose and brought it round to him, remarking that she had fixed it
just to his liking. Old Wrinkle, as his intimates--and many
others--knew, was not backward in the use of his tongue, and yet there
was something in the unwonted ceremony of the present meal that silenced
him. The old fellow, however, was making a record-breaking use of his
eyes. Henley saw him taking in every detail of his former
daughter-in-law's appearance and mood, and smiling all too knowingly for
anybody's comfort as he munched and gulped.

After breakfast Henley was at the gate ready to walk to the store when
Wrinkle came to him and clutched his arm familiarly.

"Wait, I'll go 'long with you," he said. "I want to talk to you some,
anyway. Alf, did you ever since the world was made--"

But his words were lost on the morning air, for Mrs. Henley was calling
to her husband from the porch, where she stood smiling at him from the
honeysuckle vines.

"Don't go yet!" she called out, and she tripped down the steps toward
him. She paused at a rose-bush on the way and plucked a bright-red bud,
and, bringing it to him, she began to fasten it on the lapel of his
coat. "You are getting entirely too slouchy," she mumbled, a pin in her
mouth. "You never used to wear such dowdy clothes. You've got to spruce
up--ain't he, Pa?"

"Well, it ain't Sunday, nor camp-meetin'," Wrinkle made answer. "He
looks well enough for every day; he'd look odd with a long, jimswinger
coat on in that dusty store with all them one-gallus mossbacks he makes
his livin' out of. Them fellers 'u'd laugh at 'im an' say he was gittin'
rich too fast at the'r expense."

As red as the flower with which she was trying to adorn him, Henley
pushed the bud away. "I don't want it," he said. "I never was any hand
to put on such things. I'd be a purty sight, now, wouldn't I--walkin' in
town with a flower-garden pinned to me?"

She submitted to his refusal, deftly twining the stem of the flower into
the cheap lace about her neck.

"I've got a favor to ask of you, Alfred," she said, sweetly, "and I
don't want you to refuse it, either. This time I know what I want, and I
must have it."

"Well, what is it?" he asked, his attention diverted from her by the
hungry stare with which old Wrinkle was awaiting the climax of the
little scene.

"Why, I want y